A wonderful book about a mennonite woman whose father is patriarchal in the extreme. They live in a mennonite colony in Mexico. Irma varries jorge in the drug trade, they live in the father's other house and take care of the chickens for him. Jorge leaves and a film company comes to the place to make a movie and Irma's life changes dramatically. She is a strong character. naive but smart and loving. Her sister has long ago left and Irma discovers what has happened y her which is the dramatic ending. Tear inducing and suspensful.

Great book- A graet follow up to A complicated Kindness

Easily the quirkiest novel I have ever read. After Tom Stoppard's offerings of course.

Irma is 19, lives in a rural Mennonite community in Mexico, and has been ostracized by her father for marrying a young Mexican man. Her father has expected her to live in another house on the property in exchange for work. Her husband, Jorge, sticks around for a while, but then tells her she asks too many questions, and makes himself scarce. When Irma's father rents the remaining house to a film crew making a movie, Irma is intrigued and finds herself working as a translator between the director and a German actress. Meanwhile Irma's younger sister Aggie is finding life under their father's rules unbearable and wants to run away. As the situation deteriorates, Irma finds she must make a choice and face the past she has always denied. This is a strong story with elements of coming-of-age and independence. The characters are complex and interesting.

Had I not read a review promising that "Irma Voth" picks up after 140 pages, I may well have given up long before that. Indeed, the narrative moves idly at first: the eponymous protagonist, nineteen years old and abandoned by her husband, lands a job translating and cooking for a film crew that has descended upon her Mennonite community in rural Mexico. As Irma struggles to find her place in the world, the reader struggles through the thoughtful but minimalist prose that narrates Irma's story. Finally, Irma's involvement in the film leads her to flee her tyrannical father's compound with her sister, Aggie. When the girls tell their mother their plan, she hands them her newborn to take along. Here, the novel gains momentum and becomes infinitely more interesting but also implausible. Irma's father may not value girls though it's hard to imagine that her mother would consider a newborn safer in the company of two teenagers running away to Mexico City than in her own home. The world the girls discover on their journey is foreign and intimidating but also unrealistically accommodating; things fall into place a little too easily. Despite weaknesses in her plot, Miriam Toews ultimately creates an interesting character study of a young woman dealing with abandonment and tremendous guilt brought on by a terrible family secret, the reason the family left its native Canada. Toews not only asks, how do we forgive ourselves? but also, can words transcend their literal meanings? Irma may never answer these questions but she does come to value her own worth and to appreciate her own expression. As she writes in her notebook, "I love the sound my new pen makes on the paper and the thickness of the pages. It terrifies me."

Big disappointment, but i did struggle through to the end. I didn't care about Voth's journey after she left her family home (ie with the film crew or her trip to Mexico City). I wanted to learn more about her mennonite upbringing and the struggle within her family and their conflicting values etc. Nothing, besides her family taught me about her mennonite roots, conflicts, and history. The whole middle of the book seemed like "filler" to me. Too bad!

Not as good as her previous works. I felt like the story built to a climax, as the truth about the past is gradually revealed, but then it drops off without any true resolution.

Really difficult to get into!

In Toews' new novel, the Mennonite community and family issues are relocated from Manitoba to Mexico, but the protagonist's need to escape continues.